The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Action absorbs anxiety (Friends)

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Arun Gupta, now a "free agent" after his surprise exit at Intel, joins us to discuss how he's dealing with his first job hunt since the 1990s. Along the way, we talk about agentic coding strategies, what GPT-5's release implies about the future, and more. (US buys 10% of Intel)++

Finally, it's time for change logging friends with Adam and Jared and some other rental. We hope that you love it and stay until the end. We're not offended if you can't know. We know you're probably busy coding and your deadline is pretty foreboding. Your caffeine intake is an actual problem, so why don't we walk outside? And we can listen to change logging friends From Adam and Jared And it's Silicon Valley

We know one day the gag will come to an end But honestly, that will probably be our finale We bet your sling one's and zeros And that makes you one of our heroes Your list of to-dos will be waiting for you So why don't we walk outside And we can listen to Change Logging Friends Without a new jamming people you know

Change Logging Friends Let's get you back into the floor Change Logging Friends Change Logging Friends It's your favorite ever show Favorite Ever Show What's up, friends? I'm here with Kyle Galbraith, co-founder and CEO of Depot.

Depot is the only build platform looking to make your builds as fast as possible. But Kyle, this is an issue because GitHub Actions is the number one CI provider out there. But not everyone's a fan. Explain that. I think when you're thinking about GitHub Actions, it's really quite jarring how you can have such a wildly popular CI provider, and yet it's lacking some of the basic functionality or tools that we need to actually be able to debug your builds or deployments.

And so back in June, we essentially took a stab at that problem in particular with Depot's GitHub Action Runners. What we've observed over time is effectively GitHub Actions, when it comes to actually debugging a build, is pretty much useless. The job logs in GitHub Actions UI, is pretty much where your dreams go to die.

Like, they're collapsed by default. They have no resource metrics. When jobs fail, you're essentially left playing detective, like clicking each little drop down on each step in your job to figure out like, okay, where did this actually go wrong? And so what we set out to do with our own GitHub Actions of Observability is essentially

you built a real observability solution around GitHub Actions. Okay, so how does it work? All of the logs by default for a job that runs on a Depot GitHub Action Runner, they're uncollapsed. You can search them, You can detect if there's been out-of-memory errors. You can see all of the resource contention that was happening on the runner. So you can see your CPU metrics, your memory metrics, not just at the top-level runner level,

but all the way down to the individual processes running on the machine. And so for us, this is our take on the first step forward of actually building a real observability solution around GitHub actions so that developers have real debugging tools to figure out what's going on in their builds. Okay, friends, you can learn more at depot.dev. Get a free trial, test it out. Instantly make your builds faster. So cool.

Again, depot.dev. We're here with our old friend Arun Gupta, a free man. You're a free man now, Arun. Indeed, it is. I like to call myself as a free agent now. Okay. Yeah. This is the first time, gosh, in almost

30 years. I've ever been a free agent. And it's weird because over the last five, six job changes, I've never had to prepare a resume. I never applied for a job. The last time I applied for a job was sun.com slash jobs back in 98, actually. And after that, I've always been, hey, come work for me. Can I do this fun thing? And we'll craft a job for you kind of thing. and as part of, as I say, corporate restructuring, the entire team that was to do with developers was let go. And here you go, you know, involuntary free agent. But as rightly said, you know,

there is definitely a bit of freeness to this entire thing. But I'm enjoying it so far. The company's Intel, right? That's the free agent company you're from. So there's some obvious things in the news about Intel for the last while. Are you going to spill some beans? Can you share some stuff?

How close can we come to the sun on this conversation? Well, so back in 21, I believe, is when Pat Gelsinger wrote a letter on LinkedIn, which is an open letter to the open ecosystem. And he said open ecosystem is a fundamental philosophy at Intel. And at that time, I was at Apple. nothing open there things are changing but at that time it was very rough and I said my god a CEO like that who believes in open source and open ecosystem and if somebody could fix or change Intel that's bad gal finger and so that's what got me excited I saw the letter in October-November time frame

So, yeah, it's good. But then, you know, things change in January, February time frame 22 when they reached out that, hey, we would like you to run this open ecosystem team. And then they offered a very lucrative title of a VP. So I said, okay, you know what? That sounds exciting. You know, and I'm never afraid of challenges in that sense. So let's bring on the toughest challenge. Let's put the pedal to the metal, everything that you have learned in the industry, and see what we can do to turn the ship around.

And we did our best, you know. I mean, we, my team was responsible for the developer outreach in the open source world. We were running events. We were doing hackathons. We were doing workshops. We were doing blogs. Very successful podcast. All sorts of fun stuff that developers would reach out to. We ran that. And over the last year or so, I was running the developer programs team. That was about 40 plus people. So I had a whole bunch of Devrel people under me who was driving, who was really directly writing the code and working with the developers. Then that was Dev Academy team. Then there was an ACE team, Academy, community, and events.

And that team was responsible for running large events, having Intel's presence at events like CubeCon, open source summit, et cetera, reinvent and all. And we were very directly engaged with academia, running student ambassador programs and all sorts of fun stuff, also managing all the social media handles. And then I had a bunch of folks. At some point, I had OSPO, the Open Source Program Office, part of my team as well.

And then I had a whole bunch of principal engineer-like people who were working with hypers or with AI communities and all. So I would say the last gig was very satisfying because you're operating at that scale, you know, driving the presence in the developer ecosystem. We had all the fun. For sure. I think even what drew us to, like, going back to the open source strings your approval and what attracts you to Intel is something that was surprising to us.

Jared, you may know the details a bit more, but I think it was like contributions to Kubernetes. There was some like unknown Intel deep contribution into various things in the open source community that were largely, we were unaware. I would think that we would be kind of aware to some degree, right, Jared? But there was some surprise there when we met around two years ago at all things open. I don't want to say, was that right? Is that right? Right. Yeah, I remember when we were interviewed, I didn't know about, I mean, I knew Intel is a good contributor to open source, but to the extent that they are contributing and is like, oh, that is the, and frankly, that's

what excited me, the opportunity three and a half years ago, that that's the storytelling that needs to be done. Yeah. That Intel was the, I don't know what the current status is, but Intel was the top Linux contributor for almost 20 years. We were the founding. We were the founding, members of Linux Foundation, CNCF, OpenSSF, all of these top-notch foundations, we were among the top 10 contributors to Kubernetes, among the top five of OpenJDK, among the top three of PyTorch, now TensorFlow, so on, so forth. And with the maintainership role in PyTorch and TensorFlow, we were committing upstream contributions from other CPU companies into PyTorch, creating space for them. So we were really doing not just very Intel self-centric contributions, but very chopped wood-carry

water kind of work. So in that sense, three and a half years ago, the hope was that, yes, we tell the story more, we drive more value towards CPU, but that was pre-Chad GPD world. And I joined February 2020, and since Chad GPD launched in November of that year, everything changed. I think that's when we spoke actually was 22. So it's been three years. times flies when you're having fun. And of course, Intel has had a bit in choppy waters for a little while now. And it's just a huge corporation, I think 110,000-ish employees at its peak. I think they're obviously trying to reduce down.

I read to 75,000 by the end of the year, which is quite a drastic cut. While you're there, you're heads down. You're doing these things, you know, over the course of time, the last 12 months, 18 months. Like, was the writing on the wall, did you feel the pressure coming, or was a complete surprise to you when your whole division was re, what do they call it? Corporate restructuring. Yeah, restructured.

That's the third. Corporate restructuring. Were there, I'm sure there were whispers, right? Like, this stuff is other people were losing their jobs. For sure. Well, last year or so, I would say we definitely saw the writing on the wall, not to the extent that the entire team will be eliminated. So I did not expect that, frankly, coming at that extent.

You know, over the years, I was there. We were definitely trimming team constantly, constantly doing budget realignment. That's part of the job. So no regrets, no complaints about that. That how do we justify the cost? How do we justify, hey, you're going to sponsor KubeCon at the top-tier level? That's 100K sponsorship.

then a 100k budget, then a 50k travel, et cetera, logistics, et cetera. So you're going to spend quarter million dollar on a running event, and how do you justify the cost? Okay, so let's trim it down, maybe, not do the top-tier sponsorship, let's do the second-tier sponsorship kind of a thing. And let's send less people, let's make sure we are not making people fly

from North America to Europe, you know, let's leverage the local European developers that we have. So all that change was constantly happening. So that was constant tripping that was happening. And last year, when Pat was let go and then Greg, Pat Galsinger was let go. And then when Greg left earlier this year, that's when it became very, very apparent that, oh, this is not going good. And it's just like the very classical administration change, right? And the new administration came in, anything and everything to do with previous administration got to go.

And that's literally how it came across. It was a very cold call. There was no discussion. The decision was handed down to my boss that, okay, you and your team are gone. So I was not even communicated directly. My boss, one of the most empathetic and kind people. So she and I were constantly chatting. But from the executive management, the decision was handed down to us that, yeah, we don't need this.

Well, okay. Well, I guess you have made the decision. So here we are. We're going to make best of it. it. And as I say, when grief hits you, right? The order is usually death, devotes, and layoff. And then there are five stages of grief. So across the team, there were people of, you know, different ranges. People very young in their career, fresh out of college, year or two out of college. And some were more experienced. Some were more mature. Some were at Intel for 25, 30 years. Some not so that.

long ago. And so different people had different capabilities, different ability rather to process that grief. But for me personally, I was very clear that I'm just going to cut through the first four stages. There is no denial. There is no anger. There is no depression. There is no bargain. Yep. Cut it. Pull the card. I am on the accept stage. What next? Right away. So it took me, I would say, maybe a day or so to kind of get over it. But then I quickly moved on to the XF, say, okay, this is it. Good riddance. I know I'm going to focus on the right technologies and do more fun things now.

Yeah. How do you do that? Because a lot of us get stuck in those other stages. Like how do you, how did you actually execute on that plan? It seems like you make it sound easy. Was it easy? No, no, not at all. Not at all.

It's often not very easy, actually, as a matter of fact. And very often you are kind of stuck in that loop. Very well, said Jared, that what could have I done differently? what did I not do right, you know, can I go back and talk to the executive management and say, hey, but these guys are doing great. If you want to build another Devrel team, why build another Devrel team? We already have the skill set. You're not understanding the value purpose of it. So I think my point is that we did all of that. We did all of that. But staying stuck in the past causes worry and worrying helps nobody. You know, worrying.

takes away precious time from your current present time and it's an opportunity cost. And you can keep worrying about the past without an opportunity to either influence it or impact it or change it. So the way I realize it is over the last few years, last several years, actually, I've started listening a lot more about mindfulness and kindness. And that's the thought process I've been bringing into my head that, okay, you know what? That decision is done. part of the decision. This one decision that the team is let go is neither an indicator of the team nor an indicator of the me.

And I've been doing a lot of counseling to a lot of folks across the team. Even now that folks is okay. We're all going to find a job and let the job not define your career. Let the job not define your life. I know you're going through a tough time, but how can we help each other? we get through this together, and there are only better opportunities sitting in front of you. So I think it's not easy, but I guess there is no discount to aging. And with that comes an experience that, yeah, it's okay, it's normal, it's part of life,

you know, how do I move on? I can spend five hours in the day worrying about that, oh, man, I got, you know, it stings, it hurts, it's bad. but then that brings your entire motivation morale down as opposed to my mantra is really action absorbs anxiety so what I've been doing is you know instead of being anxious about the future

or worried about the past my GitHub profile has never been this green and I've been I've been just loving it you know I've been white coding very heavily over the last several weeks now using cursor, playing with RooCode, playing with Client, playing with CloudCode, all sorts of fun stuff, playing with all sorts of different LLMs, you know, when GPD OSS 20B launched, I played with it, I posted my comments and feedback about it,

A, B, testing, playing with all sorts of fun developer tools, which as a VP of 40 people team, I never got a time to do V more hands-on. but I would say in my career I'm probably most hands-on with the latest and the bleeding edge of technologies now. So in that sense, I could be worried about the past that why did I get laid off or pick up the latest and the greatest technologies and get myself ready and better equipped

for a role that is probably waiting for me. That phrase, action, what is it? Let me read it. Action absorbs anxiety. I had to write it down because I got my little no-power. I knew I would have to take notes on this call. I think that's a good one because the action to me, and maybe this, you can help me understand this,

but I feel like when you take an action verse to sit there and stew or think about the past, one, it brings you to the present, but it also helps you focus, which means your distraction, you're freeing yourself of other distractions to focus on the problem set. So the action is the focus. That is so key,

because I can be the one sometimes to sit there and stew a little bit and kind of be poor me for maybe a day or two too long, and then I got to get up, you know. But this action absorbs anxiety is really good. Thank you for sharing. I think it's fundamental. And usually I'm more of a doer than siter and thinking about it. And usually what I do is if there are 10 things,

and again, this is from one of the podcasts, the approach that I've learned and I try to follow is, if there are 10 things that needs to be done in the moment, I always pick the easiest thing because that's easiest thing will give you a quick victory and say, ah, I've shown something here now I can do a better thing

on top of that. Usually people pick, let me tackle the hardest thing first as the hardest obstacle is out but you're not even ready for that hardest thing, you know, the more stumblings, more falls, etc. are going to happen.

So I pick the easiest thing over there, tackle it that gives me a sense of accomplishment, then go to the second easiest, third easiest, so and so forth. So you build on top of that. And that action kind of creates that virtuous cycle for you, that flywheel for you, that feeds back into you, that you were actually accomplishing something better. And it's weird how, you know, we have that Daniel Kahneman, you know, slow thinking, fast thinking kind of a thing. You know, how our sympathetic versus parasympathetic system works.

And that, to me, is training my parasympathetic system. It's not a flight or freeze moment. I'm not in it for a fight. I'm just going to train my parasympathetic system, which is in the back of my brain, that it's going to be okay. You know, you're living in a shelter. You have a very nice and kind family. Put your feet on the ground.

You're able to start up. You are still able to run 10K a day. You're still able to body squat, you know, your own weight. So it's okay. Yeah. Those were excellent humble brags. I was just thinking about, I was just thinking about your running. Because you said action absorbs anxiety, but when you run, your mind is free.

Like your body is working and your mind is free. And I wonder if you've struggled with that because a lot of times while your body is doing stuff, like your mind is so actively free that maybe you can run circles in your mind while you're running. Has it affected you're running at all? Have you found solace in running? How has that been? It's very therapeutic for me.

Very, very therapeutic, actually. I've been running for 40 years and more recently I've started doing 10K on a more regular basis one of the things that happened is for the first couple of weeks or so because my son was in a summer break as well so I would sleep late I would get up late

late as in like 7 o'clock and that's late for me 7.30 in the morning but now that my son's high school senior year has started and sometimes I drop him to school my schedule is back to sort of the normal south Like wherein I sleep at 10 o'clock, I get up at 5.30, go for a run because I need to go drop him to school. So I'm back to that normal schedule. And so I got to get my hour run or a lifting done in between.

But during that time, you're right. You know, if you're not doing anything, the mind is free and this wanders all over the place. But I have become a big podcast listener more recently. So I have a set podcast, you know, usually starts with the day with New York Times headlines. New York Times daily where headlines is about 10 minutes they give you four or five top headlines of the day daily digs 30 minutes into a topic

then I listen to a whole bunch of different podcasts you know this could be either TED podcast I know this could be like a rethinking podcast by Adam Grant this could be Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam more recently I've started listening to 20 VC that gives you the broader landscape of the industry and where the VC industry is going

I recently subscribed to Anderson 16 A16Z podcast, so I listen to that quite regularly. Gosh, there are so many that I enjoy. And if I look at my library here, yeah, think fast, talk smart is really good. I like that one. Consider this is a good one by NPR. That gives an idea. I love listening to Wall Street Journal. They have some really good topics there sometimes.

My key podcast, typically in a long run that I love to listen, is 10% happier with Dan Harris. And that's a mind-blowing podcast because that's the one where I'm getting all of these mindfulness, kindness, preaching, not worrying about the past or the future. Hard Fork is amazing. It's by New York Times again. I listen to that quite regularly. More recently, I started listening to IMO by Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson. So they host this podcast. I think a couple of weeks ago, they had Barack Obama on that podcast.

Opinions is pretty good. I love, so a whole bunch of podcasts. So I can usually circle through them. So 10K, how long does it take you? I've been playing around with the numbers more recently. Usually, if I'm running at a normal pace, it would take about 9,915 pace per mile. So about, say, 57, 58 minutes. but more recently

I've been experimenting and experimenting in the sense that if you think about 220 as a baseline 220 minus your age is your maximum heart rate right so for a 50 year old person

there'll be 170 if you think of it that way now if that is your 100% heart rate you go down from there 190 80 70 60 so on and so forth zone 2 is where fat burning happens.

If your heart rate is between that region. Zone 3 and 4 is where your aerobic energy is burned. And with aerobic energy, you consume a lot more glycogen. It's mostly glycogen-centric. So you can consume zone 3 and 4 rather quickly within an hour, but you need to replenish it. But if you're running in zone 2, that fat-based energy allows you to run a lot longer. So I've been experimenting zone 2, but I really got to slow down my running.

So your usual pace 9, 9, 15, but zone 2, I have to run at 11 minute pace. And I have a little bit of a time at my hand right now. So I've been playing around with zone 2 running. So a 10K could take sometimes up to 70 minutes kind of thing. But then I'm really focusing on my watch that, okay, hey, here is my zone 2 bottom and the threshold heart rate. I got to keep it between that. Am I running too fast, too slow? Kind of measuring that and enjoying that dynamics while I have time.

interesting yeah so that gives you even more time to listen to more podcasts because that's a heck of a list you got there holy cow you'd listen to more podcasts than i do but so the running's been helpful the experimentation has been helpful are you are you actively playing the field like are you in interviews are you discussing things with people that's that's happening i have fortunately a very good deep network so yeah i know applying uh a role through a company website or LinkedIn doesn't get anywhere, right? It just lands in a box. ATS whole system is broken.

So you really have to start talking to people, you know, getting a referral. And sometimes just the referral doesn't cut it. You know, so you've got to go talk to the hiring manager essentially that, okay, hey, here's a candidate that I know. And then you've got to think about, okay, what do you want to do? You know, this is what you have done for the last 25 years. What do I want my next 10, 15, 20, whatever that time frame looks like. I want to do there.

So I've got to craft that pitch ready. Here are three things that really matter to me. And here is what I'm good at. Here is what I've done. Be very crisp with that elevator pitch, so to say. So I've been talking to a lot of folks, all different kind of roles. I see founding engineer, founding CEO, all sorts of roles. CMO, SVP, all sorts of different roles.

But I am not in a rush to really. pick up a roll. I think it's really good to match with what I'm excited about. And what I'm excited about really is three things that matter to me. You know, something that I really excel at is building that developer community. How do you grow your developer community? Doesn't matter what product it is. And last week I wrote an article on LinkedIn, which talks about how you grow your developer community, say from zero to 100K, then from 100K to a million, then a million to 5 million then 5 million to 50 million then 50 to 100 million and I wrote that article based upon my experience because I built some of those communities and the what are the leading factors

what are the lagging factors that kind of indicate what that looks like what are the growth triggers that you need to adapt so that's building that developer community is something I'm super excited about so that's fun the second part of it is and anybody that is doing technology these days. Open source is a big part of it. So if there is an open source angle to it, then I will excel all the more. If there is no open source angle, that's fine too. But if there is an open source angle to it, then I will excel all the more. So how do you tap that open source community to work for you in your basis, in your advantage, and how do you make sure the open source monetization model is in place? That's the second part of it. And then the third part,

I definitely want to have AI as the central element of it. So developers, open source, AI, those are sort of the three key bullets that I'm looking for, what my next role is going to be. So I'm not too much into the title, but I really care about those three components. What kind of impact can I have in the company, in the industry? Because I know I've done wonderful things in the past. So I'm just going to take my time to figure out what my next road is going to be.

Well, friends, I'm here with Damien Schengelman, VP of R&D at Oz Zero, where he leads the team exploring the future of AI and identity. So cool. So, Damien, everyone is building for the direction. of Gen. AI, artificial intelligence, agents, agentic. What is Off Zero doing to make that future possible? So everyone's building Gen.A.A. Apps. Gen. A.I. Agents. That's a fact. It's not something that might happen. It's going to happen. And when it does happen, when you are building these

things and you need to get them into production, you need security. You need the right cardrails. And identity, essentially, authentication, authorization, is a big part of those cardrails. What we're doing at OtZero is using our 10 plus years of identity developer tooling to make it simple for developers, whether they're working at a Fortune 500 company, or they're working just at a startup that right now came out of Y Combinator to build these things with SDK's, great documentation, API first types of products, and our typical OTH0 DNA. Friends, it's not if it's when, it's coming soon. If you're already building for this stuff, then you know, go to OTHZIO. 0.com slash a i get started and learn more about off for gen a i at off zero dot com slash a i again that's off zero dot com slash i i was a little worried about open source there for about a week maybe a week and a half and i started to see more and more of like when we

had the conversation jared a little while back just talking about if i could generate code so quickly, does it make open source no longer valuable? Because we tend to open source full frameworks, full ideas, you know, community-led things that have a lot of different facets and bug fixes. And like, it's very, very rich. It's a very rich thing. And I had been like really, really worried, I suppose, almost like deeply sad in my heart. Like, is something going to change fundamentally with open source now that it's so in quotes so easy to generate some new code and i i sat there for a little bit thinking that until i began to play more so and maybe you maybe you feel this way tell me if you do but i kind of feel no i fully feel like the change that's

happening right now is going to influence even more open source because more people will develop more things that are uniquely viable to them they're uniquely viable to the the workflows they decide to use and I feel like we're going to have a major, major boom in a proliferation of more open source out there, more developers, you know, more people using software, more developers contributing more software. I was worried for a bit there. How do you feel?

Do you feel like it's, are you worried about less open source or you think it's for sure more open source being produced? I think it's definitely leading more towards more open source. And I'll give you my theory behind that. So if you think about the pendulum swung too hard towards LLMs to begin with, oh, 400 billion parameter model, 500 billion, a trillion parameter model, and those are the ones that we really need. Those are all close-source models. You should worry only about the performance part of it, and we are good with that.

But now we are seeing kind of pendulum kind of coming back. You know, those LLMs are great at all the things that needs to be done in the world. But in order to solve my problem, I don't need 99% of that functionality. I need like a small language model that does my thing well and really well. So if you think about that pivot is coming down back from LLMs to SLMs, small language models, 35, 7, 15 billion parameter model that can very well run on my CPU. And that's exactly where the innovation is happening. And if you think about, pick a vendor, Microsoft, Google, Amazon is very, very service-centric,

but pick any other vendor, essentially, they have an open-source model. And those open-source models are a lot smaller, 5 to 7 billion parameter model. Heck, even OpenAI has a GPTOSS, 20 billion parameter model. GROC, X-AI just did their GROC model. It's a large model, but it's open source. all of these large commercial entities are realizing that open source is the way by which you know, you can bring the largest developer mindshare.

You know, as quirky as GROC is, but now open sourcing it, you understand the quirkiness and then you can start participating and make it better. So I think in that sense, with AI, frankly, more open source is going to happen because it's not going to be less. Yes, people are going to be able to write more generate more code.

The thing that I worry about, though, is I'm not a coder, but I am using white coding tool. And before white coding, I could have done maybe 400, 500 lines of code in a day. But with white coding, now I can do 4,000 lines of code a day. What kind of technical debt that generates for future generations? So for example, I remember seeing a keynote from GitHub where they say, hey, we want to reach out to a billion developers. Sure do you want to reach out to a billion developers? But what does that mean? And the classic example they said is a grandma should be able to say on her phone, hey, take all my Instagram photos, organize them in certain order, store them in certain order, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, the idea was that is an NLU interface. You'll parse that. You will, end of the day, you need software to organize all of that. So if you organize that source code, you're sitting in a GitHub repository. So the classic example is great, where you get it work up and running for the first time. Who maintains that source code if things go wrong? And the models are not there. I mean, I'll give you an example.

I was playing with the app. I've been working on an app actually and that app really allows you to compare different protocols. So rest, GRPC, WebSocket, SSE, GraphQL. So there's a graph database and I make the query to the database and I compare them and I create a postman collection for it, for example. So I did all that. Now I created a GitHub code spaces version of it. where if a single click, you can have that environment deployed in your own environment.

And then after a few days, I realized, oh, you know what, that code spaces environment is not working? So I asked cursor that delete that code spaces button from the repo. And the dude didn't understand. It says, oh, you want me to delete the button. So I'm going to infer you want me to delete the dot code spaces and dot dev container definition from the repo. It struck it out completely.

I think, what the heck? I want you to delete the button only. Am I not explaining it? Are you not getting it? How are you inferring it? So I think in that sense, the amount of frustration, the amount of technical debt it will create, yes, it will generate more source code,

but the amount of debt it will create is scary. I have a hard time to disagreeing with that, especially with the latest round of releases. I think specifically chat GPT-5 has showed what I would call diminishing returns in large language. model advancements. It seems like, you know, when Sam

Alton posts a picture of the Death Star prior to the launch, we're expecting something big. And it falls flat. It's like marginally better, whatever. Like they fix a few sycophanty things, which apparently people liked. They were mad that you took away my sycophon

because I want more compliments. But it just wasn't much. And so that is leading me towards what I've been saying for a long time is like, what happens if we plateau in these models, and the code that we're getting right now only gets marginally better over the next two to five years.

There's going to be a lot of not-so-great code being produced. And a lot of the people that are producing it and publishing it online are people who don't know what good code looks like. That's dangerous, right? It's dangerous. I agree.

Yeah, I mean, I was listening to the A16Z podcast this morning and Martin Casado and all these folks, I think Aaron Levy from Box, they were talking about exactly that concept that OpenAI has been talking about AGI, you know, and they were asking what number do you put to it? When will AGI be possible? And GPD3 and four, we saw massive improvements

in terms of significant improvement in terms of the LLMs. But GPD5 now is only marginal improvement, if it all, we call it that way. You know, some folks have actually even expressed frustration with the users of GPD5 in that sense. So I think if AGI was a thing to be delivered by 27, this is not

the kind of progress that we want to see over there. We want to see more aggressive progression to be able to deliver AGI by 2027. So I think in that sense, what does even AGI look like? Is it a marketing terminology? Is it washing, you know, AI washing your product, you know.

I've heard Danilo and Dario Amadai talking about, yeah, AGI is a thing. You know, we should be getting ready for that in the next couple of years. But are the models really operating at that level because this cursor dude which is using Cloud 4 as a backend

deleting my depth spaces directory I'm not giving control to you at all right yeah you got to turn the auto button off that's for sure when you request that change don't don't auto that one definitely approve that one by manual submission it's such a mixed bag because sometimes

they do it so right and you're amazed and then other times they're just like are you a child you know you're obviously there's no cognition there so they're just But the way that I think about it, it's like, seriously, dude, you just deleted the entire code spaces file? Like, just stupid. That's just stupid. Well, and I have to, sometimes, like, one of the most frustrating things that I don't like about it is, he says, okay, you can commit to the repo, but I don't want you to push to the repo.

I will let you know when to push because if other developers are using it, I don't want them to have a half-biged experience. And again, and again, and again, I have to remind Cursor, please do not push. without my explicit concept. Okay, I got it. And then a couple of hours later, is pushing back to the report. Back to how I do things. I said, dude, are you listening to me at all?

It's kind of ironic because all these years, computers just do exactly what we tell them. You know, like they're deterministic. They're calculators. They just calculate things. And they do exactly as they're told. And we've always wanted them to be able to do more and to intuit and do all the stuff that humans can do.

and now we've kind of gotten a little bit of taste of that but it's also brought in all of our flaws of just like just not doing what you're told like we're used to people not doing what they're told

but we can rely on computers to at least do it if I tell you to do the wrong thing you're going to go do the wrong thing and then that's my fault but at least you did as you're told now it's just like maybe maybe I'll do it

I'm told and it's like oh gosh you created you're right it makes you wonder that because I was reading an article and they were saying is not about prompt engineering these days.

It's about context engineering. So it made me wonder that when I give that command to cursor that, hey, you know what, delete that button, should I have said that do not delete the directory? I did not understand that you will do that for me automatically. So I think in that sense, it does make you wonder how much of context should I give it? And even if I'm telling you not to push to GitHub repo, what makes you? made you change your mind that you're still doing it and then say, oh, and then to talk about psychophancy, you know, it says, oh, I apologize, I shouldn't have done this because you asked

me to do that earlier and follow the command. So don't ask me again and again. So I think in that sense, there is definitely immaturity in terms of what, my son was, my younger son was building an application and he was deploying to AWS and all of a sudden the entire DynamoDB database was nude. by cursor and he was like dad what happened i said well i'm glad we set up the whole daily backup so you have a backup you can restore from that so things like that very very mature right now you know i've uh you gave us a laundry list of the ones you're using you mentioned

uh like clod code you mentioned some of the obvious ones cursor you mentioned cursor but you haven't gone back to other ones you're using um i'm a fan of augment code uh one of our sponsors as well but big, big fan of their tool. I think it's arguably one of the better tools to use out there. I like amp code a lot as well. But I haven't had this challenge where it randomly deletes things. And I think it's because you mentioned context engineering. And Jared, you may remember this way back. I think way back is like in this year. So forgive me by saying way back by just a few months ago. I said, you know what it is? It's document driven development. And this spec-driven development, but I was like, I like DDD better. It sounds cooler. And so I was like,

document-driven development is the way to go. You have to document what you're going to build and then give it that clarity is the, is the spec, is what you've decided, is what you designed. And our friends in the Python language community, they have PEPs. I think it stands for project enhancement proposals, I believe, or is it Python enhancement proposals? Python. Yeah. So this idea of PEPs. And so what I done in my work playing with this is I took that model of PEPs and I've borrowed it and replaced it and it's project enhancement proposals and so I take I've taken

the document-driven development as a as an operating system and I've implemented something I'm calling agent flow and the way all this flows together is a way for these agents to draft PEPs implement that work successful successfully, document what I'm calling knowledge-based articles or KBs, bugs maybe even, or even updating back to that pep, or even builder logs, which are like stories of what they do to build. And this entire workflow, I'm calling agent flow. It's groundbreaking, I think. I think this context engineering is the way to go, pep engineering, however you want to call it, but document-driven development, giving them a full spec of a feature and not like build the whole app,

but more like make this thing better in these ways. And it's very clear. There's phases in there. There's whatever. And it's doing all that work. All I'm telling it is the rough idea. And all I'm playing with really is like a little C-L-I tools. Like a granola, C-L-I, don't get upset Grinola.

I reverse engineered, not me, but somebody else, the agent, reverse-engineered the unofficial Granola API, just so I can extract markdown files from Granola, granola AI. It's so cool. But this idea of like document driven development and agent flow to me has been just impressive and full of results, like positive good results. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, I think my flow has been similar. For example, I don't do discussion in cursor. All of my discussion is with chat gpd so hey i'm formulating an idea because i don't know at what point of time cursor will trigger oh let me start implementing the repo no don't implement the repo right now i'll let you know when i need to implement the repo stop don't do anything yeah exactly right

so what i do is i discuss with chat gpt that here is what i would like to do what about this what about this what about this so i craft my prompt from chat gpt because chat gpt can maintain the session so as i'm doing back and forth and i say all right now craft a prom now you understand my requirement I think I've communicated clearly, so give me the requirement. So I read it, I make sure that everything is documented correctly. Then I say, make this as a prompt for cursor. Then I give that prompt to cursor, and then it says, boom, now you go generate the first shot of the repo. And usually I commit the first set of the repo, and then I start tweaking it for developer experience, whatever that needs to be done.

Then the other tool that might be worth looking at, as you're talking about, Adam, is Amazon Kiro, that was launched a few weeks. ago and that they are doing exactly what you're saying about spec driven development or document driven development where you can define the spec. I've heard good comments about it. I was not particularly impressed by myself. I didn't see much value of it as such, but maybe I haven't explored it enough, but that is definitely worth a look, Amazon Kiro. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I think we have a show coming up with somebody from the Kiro team. There was a great post on X a couple days ago about this topic. and it was I found it funny

I'll share it here. Programming has quietly turned into a practice of making micro wishes to a genie. The art is making the wishes in the right order in just the right way to eventually get what you want. Right. And I think that's been that's approximately true. Now the

quote tweet, as we used to call them back in the Twitter days, it was even funnier. Programmers don't realize that this is exactly what their PM's relationship is to them. So we are now the PMs. You know, they used to be making micro wishes to their programmers trying to get what they want. And now we're doing it to our quad code or our cursor.

Yeah, I mean, I was reading about, like, I played a little bit with Replit, I played a little bit with Loveable, all of these different tools, just to kind of get an idea of the landscape that what are the tools that people are doing. I mean, and the more you play with them, I mean, if you think about, lovable has reached $120 million dollars, ARR in seven. seven months. Seven months. That's astounding. This is, this $100 million error, companies used to take three to five years. And at $100 million, they say, aha, I'm ready to go IPO. The landscape, the dynamics are very different.

Cursar is almost a billion dollar ARR. Almost a billion dollar error. And I was listening to 20VC podcast. They were talking in that podcast that by any. end of next year, it'll potentially be $4 billion. But then this morning, they were also talking about on A16C, or I think different podcasts, about the AI bubble. Because what is cursor?

Tomorrow, if, say, Anthropic says, we're not going to let you use Claude. Cursar is going to fall flat. Because they're really relying upon the back end of the cloud. And all of these companies, Anthropic, Open AI, they're all burning money. They're not cash flow positive yet. Right. You know, yes, their valuation is $60 billion or $500 billion or $500 billion, whatever that number is, but they're all burning cash. So they're burning more GPUs today, so they're not earning money.

And if cursor is just like a VS code, nicer interface on top of Claude, why would Anthropic not build deeper features with Claude code? So it's TBD that cursor continues to stay the market leader versus Claude code kind of picking it upside. I think all of this landscape is very dynamic. And then on the parallel side, you start seeing tools like Klein or RooCode. These are open source wide coding tools. These are becoming popular as well. If you look at Klein,

there are about 2.5 million developers using it. If you look at RooCode, there are about 20,000 stars to the repo. And they brag about how you can use. They're not tied to a backend model. You can choose whatever model. You can even choose open router. So I played with this.

I configured, I believe in RooCode, I configured open router. And in $5, literally saying what $4.53, I could create a full-blown app that could talk to my Strava and get me some details. I think you can actually start quantifying dollars in the lines of code that are being returned. And you can start justifying these tools more and more. Yeah, five bucks getting out kind of cool. I think that's kind of what I mean. Like, I think, I don't know about the open source side of that, but I definitely think there'd be more code. I wonder if the world will be invited to somehow solve little problems in their house.

But I really feel like I'm going to eat my words on this one because dig this. This is sort of a side tangent, but I was talking my wife as you would when you're driving. And I think I was saying like something like I had a conversation with somebody and I said I compare Windows. in Linux. And she said, that person has no idea what Linux is. I'm like, they have to know what Linux is. And I was comparing them. I was just saying like Windows versus Linux in this one case. I'm like, and by the way, this is Linux. I was doing it comparable. I'll save the story in the backster on that front. But she's like, they have no idea what Linux is. I'm like, babe, don't you think half the, like most of the world knows that the internet, the most of what

we do in the world runs on Linux? She's like, no, absolutely not. And I'm like, but here's me. But here's me, the naive, hopeful one. I'm like, no, that's got to be true. Like, it's so true for me. It has to be that true for so many other people. She goes on Facebook, and she posts the thing and says, she essentially re-asks my question. And there's so many hilarious comments.

And like, the internet has an operating system. Like, you wouldn't believe the things. All that to come back to say, five bucks get a nap. That seems kind of cool. I want that for the world. I want to empower people to create software. I think more so in like home labs or in home spaces

where they can solve their own problems but I don't know I don't know if that's really going to be a thing it might be a while to that gap closes I want that too and I've been on this personal software kick you know this Adam

I've been talking about you know a home cook meals and like single use apps and now we can just vibe code up our own little solution it doesn't have to get published it doesn't have to be for anybody but us and I want that for everybody

because you know the power of like just scratching your own itch and then moving on in life Like, that is so awesome if you do it 10 times at a week. Now, all of a sudden, you're saving all this time and effort. But then I saw somebody say the other day, which struck me as true, they said, everyone's going to have their own vibe-coded app, just like everyone's going to have their own 3D printer in their house. Because that never actually happened.

Like, 3D printing was supposed to be this revolutionary new technology to be one in every house. You're going to print your own furniture, you're on this, your fixes. It's like, it's cool. and a lot of people make really amazing things with it but it never actually permeated not yet at least mass market like not I don't even know of all the 150 people in my personal network

that everybody has according to that one guy I don't like two people to have a 3D printer you know and they're super nerds I just feel like this might be like that yeah is that there's super nerds or they're just tinkering or they're creating like they're creative types no offense but like key chains and like trinkets type yeah that's fun

cool stuff or like maybe they fix a a shelf or something but yeah it hasn't actually done what everyone said it was going to do and because it's technically complicated its fault there's a lot of faults you can run into we have a 3D printer we bought a cheap one should have bought an expensive one because it's just been a headache and so it just says in the closet you know it's like and I feel like vibe coded apps are going to be kind of like that it's like yeah and those are easier to get going than a 3D printer but maybe on a similar trajectory yeah I don't know well and I think to add on to that, you and I live this world on a regular basis, but can I ask my wife is a tech.

I know, she's really awesome. She is a director of technical programs at NetApp. So she's very technical in that sense, but she's not a programmer. She has a master's in computer science and undergrad in computer science as well, but she left programming a long time ago. But can I ask her that, hey, you know, why don't you try wipe coding? I say, wait, what am I doing here? Like, why do I need to do. So I think that's one friction point, frankly. And the second friction point is, okay, so I can't ask her, okay, download cursor and give it an idea on what you want to build. So you're right in that sense. You know, it's like, yeah, sure, I will play with it for 15 minutes because if you want me to, but that's not something that I'm going to build an excitement of it and

carry on forward. You and I kind of live this thing on a daily basis. And my GitHub profile is super green because I'm chunking out lots of code, kind of giving it their experience that I want and tweaking the code accordingly. But that's our life. That's not everybody's life. So I agree in that sense. And I worry about it that lots of code is going to be generated, but the amount of technical debt it creates. Think about five years out from now. How many repos are going to be dead because they were created five years ago and never maintained and now CVs, vulnerabilities, all of a sudden are skyrocketing. That's the case right now even. Like, you're just.

look up uh i did this recently i looked up uh dns uh dns servers on on on on on geth up like what's what's out there in open source that is like dns resolver related because uh i told you this jerry recently i i replaced pie hall uh accidentally but it's been kind of fun i'll share more i don't know the time but there's so many results and there there's some experiments there's so many dead repos out there now before vibe coding before chat gpt really helped everyone leg up and leverage AI to generate so many lines of codes in a day from 400 to 4,000 as you had said before. But I think, yeah, it's going to get even more. I wonder, though, like technical debt, like if it's a random application that I open sourced on GitHub or I

published to GitHub because that would become the thing. It won't really be like I open source. It was like, well, I need to use GitHub because GitHub is essential in the, you know, the build stage and the CIA stage to get to production or whatever production is or live on the internet, they may even say, you know, like, how do we get to technical debt if I'm just building one-off things that sort of matter to me? It has to be adopted and absorbed and, you know, communities have to surround around it and stuff like that to become technical debt. How would it, how do you think technical debt would result? So it's not about your personal apps that are going to cause technical debt, right? Now, imagine if I'm working on Kubernetes,

right? I take a look at the issue, I suck up the entire code base in cursor, and I say, I want to resolve this issue, and it generates a whole bunch of code, which I have no idea of how the code looks like. And I said, yeah, send a pull request. So that's the challenge, because now Kubernetes maintainers are required, if they want to approve the merge request. They are required to review that code, which probably is not going to be per the standard and all those things, because you're not giving it enough context. And it doesn't understand all of that. And so those are the places where it's perfectly fine to create your hobby apps, you know, but it's going to 10x your improvement for sure. And I've been enjoying it. So, but is those projects where projects like PyTorch or Kubernetes or OpenJDK where I start kind of injecting this wipecoded code and that causes a problem then? I think maintainers are going to be all over this.

They already are. So just yesterday in ChangeLog News, I covered, Herschimodo's recent decision on Ghostie to require disclosure of all AI tooling contributions in every poll request for it to be considered in Ghostie. So if you submit a PR and you used AI tooling and you don't disclose it you did, it's like an Instaclose basically, and I'm sure Mitchell knows what that looks like. He must because he's just fed up with it and he thinks that it's common courtesy now to say, hey, this was written 90% by Claudecode.

At least then your maintainers know what they're. should expect, like, as I go in a code review. And so that's just one step that one guy has made. I'm sure other maintainers will follow suit. And hopefully GitHub actually creates some sort of processes around this. You know, I know there's the co-authors line in Git where you could like co-sign that this was written by Jared Plus cursor, whatever it is. But if we formalize these things, then we can have more clear, what do you call it, disclosure, I guess, of who actually did the coding. And that will help us to avoid some of this stuff, I think. Because some people are actually submitting stuff that adds the feature they want, but they don't know how it adds

the feature they want, right? They're trying to be helpful, and they want a feature, and so they submit a poll request written not by them, but it works. And so it's like, okay. Yeah. That's where I think it comes back to it's still just too hard it's just still too hard to to be a developer or to develop i i guess debtless software like that's yeah the debt-free scream the old dave ramsie debt-free scream stuff to get you with software yeah it's it's being a developer or making software however you want to frame what that role is these days as it changes i think it's still just too hard it even though lovable may get you there quicker it doesn't it doesn't like Once you get a customer, if that's a commercial facing application, or anything beyond a toy, you face serious challenges at scale or even at not scale.

Like, your sale could be a hundred, a couple, it could be a couple hundred people. It could be whatever your little thing is, whatever version of skill you're talking about. But it's still just too hard. There's still too much awareness of what a developer does from a terminal to production. Even terminally like I just said, like open sourcing versus publishing to get up, that's not, you know, the same to everyone or production or CI or all these different things that happen in the build stage. That's not common knowledge and it's still just too hard. I think for most people, and Arun, you mentioned your wife and how technical she is, but back to what I think you were saying was that she doesn't have the patience because that's not what she's trying to accomplish. She'll play with it as a tool because you mentioned to go and play with it and see what she thinks.

But I think a lot of people will like patience to put together what we as developers have had to put together for so long. And I wonder when will it actually get easier. I think it's easier to generate code, but it's not easier to generate good debtless code. I think that's really the key, really. How do you – I'll give a classic example, right? I was working on a simple GraphQL backend. So it load the data from a text file and it creates a GraphQL visualization.

And my son came back from office yesterday. He was asking me, Dad, what library are you using? I said, I don't know. Cursor picked up a library. So the point is that you are getting to that point because Cursor gives you that ability, oh, I'll pick up a good library. It'll look good.

If you're caring only about the developer experience, you don't know if that is the right library. You don't know if cursor is really checking that does that library has enough star, folks, maintainability, or is that cursor's preference? So, you know, I mean, as a developer, you go through that mental process that I'm going to pick chart 3JS

because that is the top-notch library. Again, it goes back to context engineering. If I'm not giving the context, cursor will think what is right for it, and then we'll move on, and you have no knowledge of how this is being implemented. And if you have no knowledge, that is scary. Putting that code into production is scary.

Yeah. These LLMs are like brute force. They have to give you a result. They're designed to give you some version of happiness. I haven't tell it sometimes like, don't, don't yes, man me, okay? Don't yes person me. Give me critical thinking to defend your decision or, you know, explain why mind sucks or whatever it may be. But don't yes person me into the next phase because you're just.

job is to give me a result. You're absolutely right. I'm so sorry. I won't yes person you. Yeah. No, and that's one of the most annoying things. Tushay. If you give like a suggestion to say Kurscher, which is using Cloud back end, you say,

hey, this doesn't look right. You're absolutely right. Let me go fix this. I couldn't even think of this. I know. Because they don't actually think. They just auto-complete. Well, and that's the point, right?

We call it AI. is very artificial and not intelligent. Yeah, well, we're good with marketing terms around these parts. I don't want to defend it deeply here, but I do want to say, I think that that's one thing I like differently about Augment Code, honestly. Like they have this,

I don't even know what it's called, like some sort of context engine. It's got something in it where I haven't seen quite that same behavior where the yes person, yes, man, whatever you want to say, is in there. It seems to be, it retains things I've told it, even after a few prompts or, you know, kind of like back and forth later, like, I've been very surprised at how much it retains of the core goal. And I don't know if it's the PEPs or

if it's the agent flow or if it's the DDD or whatever it may be. But something in this flow that I've been doing doesn't give me that result. It's actually been quite uncanny. I've been surprised at how well it seems to retain the context. And it's without me prompting it for the context. Like it retains it in some way. So I don't know if it's what I've been doing, the way I've been doing it, or it's augment codes way.

I do really do the rag method of, of, you know, retrieval and stuff like that. But this context engine, I think it might have some different smarts with the way it looks at your code base and it retains certain contexts. I'm not really sure,

but I haven't had quite that same experience. It's been a bit more joyful. It's probably some traditional software engineering they're doing in order to provide the model. with that context and everything that it needs. A lot of the differentiation right now between these tools is how much software you write around the model in order to really put its best foot forward

in a continuing fashion. And we see that in different ways be better or worse. And that's really kind of the different... Because other than that, there's not much that differentiates these things today. It's really hard, I think, as a product designer. to especially with the chatbots especially is like house claude's chatbot

UI or buttons or whatever any different than chat GBT's really there's not much there they're just like their own rappers around a model which is why so many people have made money just putting better wrappers around the same model and getting people to adopt them but there's not much there's no moat there

and that's why I'm just laser focused on the quality because it was so bad for a while that I was like what are you people talking about I'm talking with a code gen quality up until Claude 4, where as listeners of this podcast know, I've been genuinely impressed. It's the first time where I've been like, this code doesn't suck every time.

I could use this. Maybe this is better than what I would have written. Like, I'm actually impressed. That being said, there's so many things that make it not 100%. Like, where are we on the AIs can write all the software, you know, spectrum? I don't know. Maybe we're like in like the 94. they can do 94% of what you need to have

but the last 6% is like everything that that's really what I've been watching like can they make that jump because until we don't have to look at the code anymore we absolutely have to look at the code and if we don't know how to then we're just in idiocry and we're in serious trouble

like everyone's talking about like serious trouble I'm well just to be clear I'm still looking to code deeply I'm still reading the code I'm actually learning more about different software as a result of that which is great Because it's like, well, here's in my own mental model.

I know what I'm trying to accomplish with this reverse engineered API or creating these archive with 7Z, which is something I've been doing. And I wrote this bash script a while ago that I wrote personally. And then Chant GPT helped me made it better. And then recently, Cloud Code, Wild My World and just totally improved it. And I was like, whoa. It's really just wild how you still have to look at the code. I'm still looking at it.

And I'm learning more because my context of what I'm doing is personal. You know, you can learn something more when you actually care about the thing. Like when you go through a training and you do a demo application, it's a to-do app or something like that, something trivial or very common. You're like, you know what?

I've seen this a thousand times. Sure, I have some context for a to-do app. But in my case, I'm solving a real problem which is being able to better archive large directories. And I know what I want because I'm the user. I'm the one who has the problem. I know how I want it to work. And so I can care more deeply

about the result it gives me. And so I can follow the code and desire to follow the code even more so. So I'm actually following at learning more. Sure. Then anything like this visibility of like magically prompting is not what I'm doing. It's very calculated prompting. Right. And then I'm also looking at the code as well, not just prompt, get wish, production, boom, work, see you by, go make millions and millions and billions.

You know, it's, it's different. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are the domain expert. So in that sense, you know, you know what needs to be done. and you're intimately familiar with what needs to be done. So in that sense, the learning is always more. And personally, and I think Jared, you were talking about this,

when the thinking mode is turned on, when it's saying, putting out the proms that, hey, this is what I'm doing, oh, no, never mind, this is what needs to happen. Oh, never mind, you know, I made the wrong fix, let me back it up. That's where my learning happens. So that kind of helps me refine, validate, update my thinking, that this is how I should have gone about problem solving essentially. and then validating that, okay, this is a code that is generated kind of thing.

Well, where do we go from here, Arroon? Where do we go from here? So I think I'm looking at lots of opportunities so far I'm exploring. And I'm thinking about where to go. I'm really enjoying being a free agent and all the learning that needs to happen. But I'm also sensitive of the part that, hey, you know, we are end of August almost September. is a major hiring season, but then once we get into October, November, December time frame, then the hiring slows down. So I'm thinking about, hopefully I will find something that I'm

really excited about, and then I'll be able to jump, you know, on that ship, essentially, and be able to drive those initiatives. If anybody cares about growing your developer communities massively, you know, tapping into it, I'm available. I'm available. Talk to me, shoot me a simple mail, Arun. at Gupta at Gmail. You can shoot me a mail. You can see the work that I've done. Are you only looking for full-time stuff,

or would you also advise or do like a consulting or like you interested in other stuff? Anything is open game at this point, really. So anything is an open game. And as a matter of fact, I talked to a couple of companies more recently where they're looking for an advisor and a consulting role. So I'm talking to them as well.

So I think because I'm a free agent, I have the ability to do all that but in the meanwhile if something solid comes up then may have to kind of evaluate the opportunities accordingly so yeah anything is game at this point really is there any considering your history your work history has been like you said you haven't looked for a job and basically forever so it's how do you even do it that's not my question uh it was more of just an outside thought as you as you as you hear me but i'm thinking of the pressure potentially on you to your next role is because you've been at this company for this long, with this kind of motive and this

kind of direction and is very clear, do you feel pressure that your next choice has to be, you know, the way you've been doing your career? Does it have to be this multi-year, big, big, ceremonious thing? Or can it be a bit more like I think most ICs have been in the last five years to 10 years, which is like one or two years here and there? And more than, more than, you know, jumpy and more temporal, I would say. Is there a lot of pressure on your next choice? Not really. You know, I am, again, trying to keep a very open growth mindset.

Depending upon what the opportunity comes up, I have not said no to any of the opportunities. As I said, you know, there was a two-person company that reached out to me to be the founding CEO, for example. So I'm exploring those. You know, they're very, very rough idea. They barely decided working on this for the last couple of months, but exploring. It's like, oh, that's an area that I'm not super excited about. And I don't have a lot of core competency in that.

CEO role sounds very exciting, but I need to really believe in the mission and the delivery of the mission and that sort of stuff. So to me, really, that alignment with my value, as I said, developer, open source and AI, those are the three core components that I'm looking at it. And of which developer and AI are sort of the more core components. Open source is naturally going to be part of it. But anything that aligns in that, whether it's an executive role, whether it's a IC role, whether it's an advisory role, whether it's a consulting role, I'm again keeping very open mindset here, not trying to box myself, not trying to be encumbered by the past that, okay, my next role, I must be and a VP as well.

You know, I mean, I was a director at Red Hat. From there, I went to VP at Couchbase, much smaller company. But then from there, I went to IC at Amazon. And from there, I went to manager at Apple and then VP at Intel. So I'm totally fine going back, you know, being an IC at a bigger company, because I could be very valuable in terms of defining that strategy where execution is on somebody else. but I'm equally capable of rolling my sleeves up

to help with the execution part of it. So if you have a large team, for example, that needs help, you know, not just the strategy part of it, but people who want to help getting started, so I can certainly do that. So I think, again, keeping options very open, my opportunity is very open.

Those are the things that I'm really good at, and that's what I'm looking at. I never really considered the fact that, like, you know, when there's a hiring season, And similar to you, I just haven't had to look for a job, fortunately, in so long. So I don't know that there's cycles and hiring flows. I imagine there's a lot of folks who have had change, maybe even fellow colleagues from Intel in particular. And since, you know, when you made your list, you said devs, that was people, open source, that's software.

And then AI, that's maybe the thing we're using to get to the software and the stuff. So speaking to the devs that may be in this transitional period in their life, some of them may be still in the in the grief part of it or the denial part of it or just some spectrum of where you've been you've you're kind of come out the other side what is a strategy for someone looking at the remainder of this year in terms of i'm not hired i need to be hired how can i get hired and the ticking time clock that may be happening because i never consider that september is when it happens in october november december it sort of chills out and diminishes until maybe the new year yeah i think I'm going to go back to the phrase that I made earlier, you know, action absorbs anxiety. So I would recommend, you know, see, because when you are in a job, then you don't need to, you need to prove yourself in the job itself, but you don't need to demonstrate your profile externally. Now, a few things that needs to be done. Make sure you get your LinkedIn audit done very clearly because that's how recruiters reach out to you.

Make sure your core competency is called out. Make sure you have a photo shoot, you know, the photo on the top is a professional photo shoot. Make sure your about section is clearly called out. Make sure your work history is clearly called out. Not just the years, but the actual skills that you did, the exact work that you did. Have chat, GPD, Claude, whatever, review LinkedIn, your LinkedIn profile, edit it. And make sure you spend time on that. So that's one crisp part of it.

The second part of it is you also need to kind of build that profile externally. So for the last several weeks, I've been blogging twice a week. Usually one article is about thought leadership and the one article is about technical leadership. So, for example, last week I talked about that thought leadership article on how to grow from zero to 100 million developers. And after this podcast, I'm going to record a video about the lab, about the app that I was talking about. I'm going to record that video and announce that GitHub repo essentially. And then I have another thought leadership article lined up for later this week. You know, basically, if you are running a devrel, what your metric should be.

And that's the discussion that I've been having with the developer relations foundation, DRF folks in LF. So I think in that sense, I'm just sharing sort of my blueprint. And frankly, that keeps me sane that, again, solving that easiest problem than the next and then the next and then the next, it allows me to show me progress. and the worriness could differ based upon the stage of your life, right? I'm at that stage of the career

where I'm not worried about that, oh, I do not have a shelter and things like that. Or my eldest son is already working, so he's on his own already. Younger son is a senior in high school, so he's about to go to college. There is no financial constraints per se. So in that sense, I don't have a rush

that even if I don't get something solid, in the next few weeks, months as well. I'm not in a rush, no. I'll do a consulting gig. And as an athlete, I'm very comfortable with being uncomfortable, physically, mentally, things like that. So that's something you're going to kind of keep in your head. But again, build your external brand so that that makes you a more attractive talent. Everybody has access to chat, GPD, Claude, et cetera.

So everybody's writing a very impressive cover letter, very impressive. resume, what helps you stand out is networking with people. So that's sort of where I've been spending, having a structure to your day that for the first couple of hours, I'm going to scrant through LinkedIn, comment on people's articles so that you build that, re-establish that relationship. On LinkedIn, there's a simple thing that you can say, who viewed my profile? So start engaging with those people. If they're viewing your profile, is there as an interest, maybe look at what their posts

have been, start commenting on those. So some simple tips, but having that structure. For the first couple of hours, I'm going to scan through LinkedIn for the next couple of hours. I'm going to refine my resume, whatever LinkedIn profile needs to be updated. And then afternoon is going to be really digging deep into a technology and then blogging about it. So I think if you have that kind of a structure, because otherwise, if you are sitting empty, all sorts of weird thoughts coming to your head, at least to me, it gives more peace and structure. Yeah, idle hands kind of thing.

Yeah. Get action. Do some, take some action, y'all. I like that. I like that. Action Absorbs anxiety. Good job. And this is not my code. This is, I heard it from the podcast, but I... I like the idea. It's a solid. It's a solid idea. I do like that a lot. Yeah. What else? What else is left on the said? What else will not ask you about? I know we wanted to, I reached out to you on LinkedIn, a friend. I was like, oh my gosh, how you doing? we should talk. You're like, let's pot. I'm like, of course, let's get you on the podcast.

What else has left on and said that we haven't covered that you might want to cover? No, I think we have covered most of the things here. I think my advice to people is be patient to yourself. Be self-compassionate. I know, oftentimes when you apply for a role, it's a multi-week cycle. Recruiters don't respond back. Sometimes you don't even get to recruiter. You may be submitting application, a few applications every day, every week.

Sometimes you don't get respond. Don't let that define you. Don't let that bring you down. Just keep chugging at it, you know, in a very relentless manner. Keep chugging at it. Each one of you that is looking for a job at this point of time has done something wonderful. Just focus on that part of it. Don't let the negative energy come around you at all.

Just pull the cord on it right away. because if you not going to believe in yourself, that's going to show up in your conversation. If you believe in yourself, if you have the confidence that, no, I've done this. You know, yeah, I've done this at scale. You know, and this is how I've done this at scale.

Imagine what that interview conversation might look like, you know, mock it. You know, chat GPD can help you mock those interviews. So I think start getting yourself ready. So when the moment comes, then you are ready. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's the key part I would say,

comment. But otherwise, yeah, I mean, it's a road ahead. The other statement that I love from Bible, I'm not a Bible person, but it is, I really believe in it. Just because I don't see it doesn't mean the road has not been carved for me yet. Yeah. And the moment, you think about that, oh, you know what, I don't know where am I going to go. It's not a straight road ever. So hang in there, have faith, have believe in God or whatever you believe in there is a road carved out for you already

you just don't sway Yeah You know something that you said there If I can just add one to what you're saying I think that's such a good idea To like mock up an interview One thing I love a lot about AI Is the ability to

Sandbox I guess iteration Like try things Like have it do lots of scenarios And I don't know how it does it but that's a great example of, like, you can mock up, like, hey, give me tough questions I will potentially have if I go for this interview, like how, and practice with it. That's, that to me is a pretty interesting thing. I didn't think about that because you were suggesting, like, how to clean up your LinkedIn profile, which is great, but to actually train, train with it. I think that's kind of cool.

Yeah, because the common saying is I'm not worried about 10,000 things you know. I'm worried about one thing that you have done 10,000 times because you're going to be so good at it so train yourself well just figure out where do you fail what are your weakness what is your touch points

what triggers you and how do you keep control under pressure so ask those tough questions let chat GPT help you let Claude help you ask those tough questions and think in your mind you know just prepare that pitch you know have those examples ready that in the previous work on in three

years ago, this is what I did. So have those scenarios ready, practice it. That goes a long way, and really, that's the only way to go forward for me. Good deal. It's been good, Arun. Thank you for coming back on the pod. Good seeing you. Well, thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed this discussion and very fulfilling. Thank you. ChangeLog Plus Plus members are in for a treat this week because after the official show, I asked Arun for his honest take on the U.S. government buying a 10% stake on Intel, and he started with this. Lots of cards.

Yes. That's coming right up, unless you aren't in on it. Now's the time. Directly support our work, ditch the ads. Hear what Arun thinks about Intel now that he doesn't work there anymore and get other awesome bonuses. Sign up today at changelog.com slash plus plus because it's better. It is better.

It's been better for years. Thanks again to our partners at fly. episode, depot.dev, andoth0.com slash AI. Next week on the pod. News on Monday. Jim Mesnick from Exo Ruby on Wednesday. And Christian Roka from Charm, CLI on Friday. Have yourself a great weekend.

Share the show with a friend or three who might dig it. And let's talk again, real soon. Game line.